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Hi, I was wondering if anybody could help a person with minimal IT/Programming skills with securing a ninjatrader workstation from hackers, viruses, and malware. My main concern at this time is preventing hackers from gathering information about my trading strategy.
The concept I am running with now is to have two pc's. One with browsers and everything else, and the other running soley ninjatrader. I have basic zonealarm security suite, malwarebytes, and a low privelege user account running the Ninja7 on Windows 7.
I am now looking at physical firewalls and see what looks to be a decent option for around 150$ from Netgear. Does anybody know if this is a good firewall option and how to set one up to monitor the connectin and ensure that hackers are not stealing proprietary information? Is it easy to do and would it be effective at preventing a determined hacker?
Can you help answer these questions from other members on NexusFi?
I use Malwarebytes as well and I have Microsoft Security Essentials on all 3 of my PCs. I use the Windows firewall and have not had any issues. Also, the PC I trade with NEVER sees the internet, I only use it for trading; any downloads from Ninja, futures.io (formerly BMT), or even a vendor go to my secondary PC and then to a flash drive. Even then, I hear you can still pick up a bug. As far as a mechanical firewall (thats what I call it) I have had good luck with my Cisco Lynksys E 2000; it doesn't affect my ping speed like some of the "bongo brand" routers I have owned in the past.
One last note: If a hacker wants in bad enough, they will get in......man I hate thoise jerks!
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You would try tech support at a network hardware vendor to secure your systems?
I personally think that is most unwise.
Also it would be much smarter for a hacker who was interested in your trading system to simply intercept your signals.
No need to actually know your trading system details, if your trading signals were known to be profitable, simply eavesdropping on the signals would be all they would need to profit from your system.
In my opinion if you are really that paranoid about virus, malware etc infecting your trading system the best thing you could do would be to segregate your trading system using virtualisation.
Create a system image with windows, install your trading system into it, then create a snapshot of the pristine system. If you suspect infection simply rollback to snapshot and you'll be clear of the malware in question. Heck if you were uber paranoid simply roll back every day.
Run this image on a dedicated hypervisor like ESXi.
How about this? Your trading setup install on the OS level, and then everything else in the VM or vice versa.
This is the setup i have. OS level is untouched. If VM mess up, i just delete it and start over. Better yet, make a copy of the vm as the backup. if it mess up, just restore the backup.
Just found a free program, Secunia Personal Security Inspector, that checks versions of software installed on PC to make sure that all versions are up to date, especially with regard to security related updates. First scan on my machine found 5 insecure programs that need to be updated.
Suggest that you look into it and make your own decision whether to use it. Leaving feedback in this thread would then be helpful. Screenshot of scan results attached. Looks like it's time to run Windows Update, no biggie.
if you act reasonable, there is enough security with the basic installation/tools available, e.g.:
1.) Use the updating features of your operating system (Windows Update, etc.) and also update your hardware drivers and installed software on a regular basis.
2.) If you use your browser on a trading PC, then have the latest version of it installed and do not visit rogue and unknown sites (warez, phony sells, the nasty stuff , etc.).
3.) Install an AntiVirus software; the windows firewall is good enough if you do no not require complex rules. It is also good having a router (and using NAT), which is just an additional layer of simple "protection" from the internet.
4.) Do no open emails from unknown senders and do not download and open attachments that you do not expect, or attachments that are executable (not data files/information).
5.) Do not install unknown software or unnecessary software, keep your system footprint low.
With those reasonable measurements, you are pretty secure in terms of threats from the internet. If you are really into more advanced security, there are other factors to include like: disk failure and backup policy, physical access security and full disk encryption, power surges and UPS uninterruptible power supply, fail over internet access or dual homing, backup data feeds, software virtualization technologies to divide and protect ressources... as you see there are a lot of things to consider, but the mentioned 5 points above are easy to implement and provide enough security for most traders/users...
Biggest source of infections is by people clicking on malware ads that tell them they need to install an update or have an infection, and click here to fix it. That itself is an infection, and you just granted access for it to be installed.
From their forward, things get 10000x worse as malware spreads through your system.
The general rule is never say "OK", never say "yes", never open any download, never run any program, never click on anything in a web browser that is flashing/blinking some security warning message when you are browsing some random website.
, etc.).